But if someone tells you, 'This was sacrificial meat,' then do not eat it; you must consider the man who told you, and also take conscience into account ??29 his conscience, I mean, not your own; for why should one's own freedom be called in question by someone else's conscience?

Before certain emissaries of James arrived, he ate along with the Gentile Christians; but when they arrived, he began to draw back and hold aloof, because he was afraid of the circumcision party.

[vss

In meat, etc

it is not what enters a man's mouth that defiles him, what defiles a man is what comes out of his mouth."

"You went into the houses of the uncircumcised," they said, "and you ate with them!"

but write them injunctions to abstain from whatever is contaminated by idols, from sexual vice, from the flesh of animals that have been strangled, and from tasting blood;

While one man has enough confidence to eat any food, the man of weak faith only eats vegetables.

But remember, it is not everyone who has this 'knowledge.' Some who have hitherto been accustomed to idols eat the food as food which has been really offered to an idol, and so their weaker conscience is contaminated.

since they relate merely to food and drink and a variety of ablutions ??outward regulations for the body, that only hold till the period of the New Order.

Never let yourselves be carried away with a variety of novel doctrines; for the right thing is to have one's heart strengthened by grace, not by the eating of food ??that has never been any use to those who have had recourse to it.

Of an

Then again, this man rates one day above another, while that man rates all days alike. Well, everyone must be convinced in his own mind;

The new

You observe days and months and festal seasons and years!

General references

And he said to them, "The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath:

You observe days and months and festal seasons and years!